ZadekpediaMilton Friedman is invoked throughout The Bob Zadek Show as a free-market economist and libertarian authority rather than as the subject of a dedicated episode. Bob Zadek calls him one of the leading libertarian free-market economists who ever lived A Libertarian Infrastructure Plan (2017), and in a 2018 episode describes him as one of the most well-known libertarian free-market economists and a Nobel Prize winner California Discovers Federalism (2018). Don Boudreaux, in a 2011 episode, notes that Friedman never called himself a conservative and denied the label, describing himself instead as a liberal in the classic sense The Second American Revolution – NOW (2011).
Immigration and the welfare state
The most developed Friedman argument on the show concerns immigration. In a 2011 episode on immigration reform, a caller named Ed attributes to Friedman the saying that illegal immigration is only good because it is illegal, because the big problem with immigration is immigrants coming to work the welfare system. Bob Zadek tells the caller he is exactly right and says Friedman believed that open borders and a welfare state could not coexist, that open borders would bankrupt the country with a welfare state, and that the welfare state had to be undone first — or, failing that, immigrants had to be denied welfare benefits Immigration Reform Is Broken (2011). Zadek adds that Friedman acknowledged undoing the welfare state was a non-starter, and that gradualism therefore required telling legal immigrants they could participate in the economic system but not the safety net, being denied benefits such as food stamps for a period of time. Zadek connects this to Gary Johnson, whom he calls his favorite candidate for president, and to work visas.
In a 2018 episode, Zadek returns to the same argument, saying Friedman thought long and hard about how an open border policy can exist in a welfare society, and concluded in a data-driven analysis that open borders cannot exist in a welfare state and will bankrupt the country California Discovers Federalism (2018). Guest Joe Mathews says he has not read Friedman’s work on the subject, having spent more time on tax policy and Friedman’s involvement in the development of Prop 13, and disputes the premise: he argues that societies with relatively high degrees of welfare need immigration, particularly aging societies, because younger productive workers pay taxes to cover welfare costs that disproportionately go to older people.
Government cost, vouchers and the draft
In a 2017 episode on infrastructure, Zadek opens with a Friedman quotation — that it costs any government at least twice as much to do something as it costs anyone else — and calls it wise A Libertarian Infrastructure Plan (2017).
In the 2011 episode with Don Boudreaux, Zadek says no issue mattered more to Friedman than opening the educational system to the free market, calls him perhaps the creator of the concept of school vouchers, and says Friedman was instrumental in getting rid of the draft in America The Second American Revolution – NOW (2011). Boudreaux agrees that no single individual in America is more responsible than Friedman for getting rid of the military draft, and says Friedman opposed conscription not only as economically unfortunate but as morally offensive, believing it was slavery. Boudreaux also notes Friedman’s support for drug legalization. Zadek closes that segment by paying tribute to Friedman, who he says was born 99 years ago that day.
School choice returns in a 2022 episode, where Zadek introduces Friedman’s 1980 book Free to Choose as a classic inquiry into the relationship between freedom and economics that later became a PBS broadcast series hosted by Friedman, and says the show will apply it to public education and Arizona’s universal school choice legislation Arizona’s School Choice Reform is a Model for the Nation (2022).
The purpose of the corporation
In a 2021 episode, Zadek describes Friedman’s 1970 New York Times piece, which he believes ran in the Sunday magazine, titled “The Social Responsibility of Business is to Increase its Profits,” and says Friedman argued it was not only immoral but inefficient for a corporation to do anything other than maximize shareholder value so long as it could do so legally and consistent with cultural norms Stakeholder Value: A New Story About Business (2021). Guest Ed Freeman calls Friedman one of his intellectual heroes and frames the question as less a matter of whether he was wrong than whether his reasoning applies to business today. Freeman says what Friedman missed, as an economist wanting to explain how markets work, was what really makes a business successful: products and services customers want, suppliers, employees who use their minds, good citizenship in the community, and money for shareholders — things that go together.
Across episodes: the immigration argument
The open-borders-versus-welfare-state claim is the one Friedman argument the episodes show argued in more than one episode. In 2011, Zadek states it as settled and pairs it with a gradualism proposal — deny welfare benefits to legal immigrants, or admit them on work visas — and a caller, Ed, supplies the framing that illegal immigration is only good because it is illegal Immigration Reform Is Broken (2011). In 2018, Zadek restates the same conclusion as a data-driven analysis, but this time Joe Mathews challenges it directly, arguing that high-welfare aging societies need immigration and that California’s extension of Medi-Cal to undocumented kids has virtue California Discovers Federalism (2018). What changed between the two treatments is not Friedman’s position but the presence of a guest willing to dispute it; Mathews also notes he had interviewed Friedman several times when he was alive.